@LeeWoofenden Plant and insect death is necessary, but there are decent reasons to think that they weren't included in the Jewish category of death, which is highly connected to blood. The main problem with proposing a creation without the death of higher animals (vertebrates maybe) is population control.

@LeeWoofenden Our eternal life will be in the regenerated, restored, and recreated heaven and earth we inhabit now. In the alternate universe without sin and death, eternal life in the first creation would not be a problem. Although you may think that's materialistic. Do you believe in non-physical eternal life? I don't remember you saying before.

@curiousdannii I do not believe that eternal life will be on this earth, in the present or in a recreated state. I believe that we live eternally in the spiritual world, in spiritual bodies that are every bit as real--in fact, more real--than the physical bodies that we inhabit while we are living on earth.